Quick on the Draw: Hasidic Rabbi Designs Special Garment for Easy Access to Concealed Firearm

A New Jersey Hasidic rabbi, Raziel Cohen, who wears the traditional long black coat called a kapota, has come up with a version that makes it easy to conceal and quickly pull out a gun. 

 As Doree Lewak wrote in the New York Post,

After he got married about two years ago and graduated to wearing a kapota, “I realized right away it was a problem,” said Cohen, 24, of the cumbersome garment, which is traditionally fashioned with buttons and a belt known as a gartel.

The issue: He couldn’t easily pull out the Glock 19 or Glock 17 he always wears during synagogue.

“When you draw a gun, you have to do it safely, quickly and efficiently — ensuring that it’s not a risk to the person drawing the gun or to those around him,” said Cohen, an NRA-certified firearms instructor.

So he designed a “Tactical Kapota” with quick-access snaps hidden under a decoy version of the buttons traditionally required for the jacket.

“People who think anyone who carries a firearm is a vigilante, that we’re looking for confrontation,” said Cohen, noting that drawing an actual firearm should be the last resort after exhausting every other layer of protection. “It’s not true. People are getting killed in synagogues and houses of worship — the places where we never want to be the most vulnerable, but are the most vulnerable. I don’t want to have a firearm in synagogue, but that’s a perfect world we don’t live in. It’s sad.”

In this video, Rabbi Cohen demonstrates his quick on the draw technique.

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